American Express trialling bonus points offers …. and a good Harrods cashback deal

If you have an American Express Preferred Rewards Gold or American Express Platinum card, you may have a new style of personalised offer showing on your online card statement.

On my account, I will receive 2,000 bonus Membership Rewards points when I spend £500 at Apple before 22nd May.

This is the first time that I have seen Amex run a bonus points offer for a retailer as opposed to a straight cash statement credit.

What is worrying is how pathetic this offer is!  The majority of Membership Rewards remptions value your points at 0.5p or less.  This means that you would be getting £10 of value back for a £500 spend, which is rubbish.  Even if you convert your points to Avios and value them at 1p each, you are still only getting £20 of value back.  Most cashback deals are more generous.

Let’s hope this doesn’t herald the start of a new trend.

If you want something more generous, this deal is better:

On my British Airways Premium Plus card, I have an offer for £50 cashback on a £300 purchase at Harrods before 5th June.

This is a great deal.  You can buy gift cards at any Harrods till point and that will trigger the £50 credit.  You can then spend the £300 whenever you want.

If you are thinking of spending £500 on an Apple product, you should buy it in Harrods instead!  If you have two participating Amex cards, you could buy 2 x £300 Harrods gift cards and get £100 back which you can then spend in the large Apple concession in the Technology department (next to Toy Kingdom, where I spend worrying amounts of time).

At the time of writing, this deal is not on the cardmemberoffers.co.uk website so you can only sign up if it shows for you online.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – October 2023 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.